Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story Read Online Free Page A

I had it mastered. My gratification was in practicing, and when my dad said with delight that I was ready for the stage, I had an unfamiliar sinking feeling.
    I was five when I first went onstage, my handmade Swiss outfit awkward and itchy. I was so nervous that I got the hiccups, though luckily no one could tell because yodeling sounds like hiccupping anyway. The crowd of hundreds clapped with thundering enthusiasm, but I was too embarrassed to stay and I bolted offstage. I was not a ham or an outgoing child, but what hooked me was feeling like I had done something—I’d won a battle I wasn’t supposed to have won. I YODELED! Hear me roar! Soon my dad was using me during the daytime as a tease for the nightly show. I got into my little outfit proudly, stood in a hotel lobby near the check-in desk, and I yodeled my little heart out as boatloads of Japanese tourists snapped pictures of the cute blonde American girl, while my dad sold tickets to that evening’s performance.
    Before shows, I played in the elevators while Shane, all of eight years old, set up the lights and learned to run the sound equipment (he was running all the gear for the show by the time he was nine). During breakdown afterward, I blew out all the candles on the tables, dipping my fingers in the cooling wax to create casts of each digit. Endless fun. In theoff-season we toured native villages, singing for Inuit (we don’t call them Eskimo—it’s a derogatory term). I have dreamy memories of my parents and me being dropped off in an ice field at midnight in broad daylight, as the sun never sets up there, and being picked up by natives on dogsleds and taken to a host’s house. Being presented with a whole moose leg, longer than my body, for dinner, with salty homemade bacon and a concoction of seal oil, sugar, and snow that they passed off as ice cream.
    We sang in village after village, my parents and I. My dad and I developed a bit where we selected an audience member to compete for a prize. My dad would teach them to yodel on the spot, then they would go head-to-head with the six-year-old, and the winner got a bottle of wine. We always let the audience member win. Alcohol was illegal in the villages, so we used sparkling apple cider for a prize, which still almost caused a riot. Just the sight of that champagne-shaped bottle nearly got us trampled. I remember the natives being warm and reciprocating. After our show, they entertained us. I remember seal mittens and polar bear boots and beautiful woven fans and the smiling beautiful brown faces dancing with stories about hunts and love and death and birth.
    At this point my music education was mostly homespun, composed of my dad’s songwriting and our family singing. I was not raised watching a lot of TV or listening to the radio or popular music. Once my dad saw I was serious about yodeling, he began teaching me about harmonies and exploring vocal control, but as much as anything, I was learning to be a professional. If I wanted to sing in the show, I knew I was expected to behave. No whining backstage. No pouting onstage. I was expected to smile and be polite, because this was our living and it deserved respect.
    We were in some ways the ideal Mormon family, with family dinners and church, complete with a family act. But a different type of family act was playing out offstage. My parents fought a lot, their strained voices escalating to full-blown yelling behind closed doors and thin walls. Andwhen they were not fighting, I often had the sense they were playacting. They seemed disconnected, hollow somehow, deeply withdrawn. There were hugs given to each other, and to their children, but tension crackled like a live wire until they announced their divorce.
    I was eight. My brothers and I found ourselves enrolled in therapy classes that taught us about the finer points of divorce. We were talked to about why it was not our fault, and also clued in to different tactics parents might employ during